After the brief “correction” in October, the market basically pulled a Men In Black where it essentially looked at the pen and proceeded to forget the past and resumed its ascendency to record highs. I made a couple of moves on my portfolios to bank some profits and to open some new positions. This is despite my feelings that the stock market is still overpriced.

Another quick peak into our Robo Portfolio which I created in January 2015. So far year to date, the portfolio is up 0.8%. Basically we’re flat when we back out the estimated 1% in transaction costs. Drilling deeper into the portfolio we can see that the generic ETF’s that comprise our US and Global equity exposure is leading the pack with returns of 4.0 and 4.7 percent year to date. The actively managed ETF’s were in the red led by the Risk Managed Bonds, Dividends, and Real Estate. The Real Estate ETF was the big laggard down 10 percent year to date.

We appear to be fully invested with only $37 remaining in cash. No matter the current market conditions, ROBO (my alias name for the Robo Advisory service that is managing the portfolio) is making sure the portfolio is fully invested. I definitely can’t say that with my personal portfolios. In that sense, this may be a positive feature of ROBO portfolios. It forces you to put money to work, come hell or high water.

During the quarter the ROBO made 2 buy decisions, adding to positions in the Divided ETF PBD and the US ETF. No ETF’s were sold during the period. So far no evidence of any churning by the ROBO, which is a good thing.

The ROBO did yield some dividend income, earning about $28 of income or about 0.56% in return.

Right now it appears the portfolio is overweight US stocks and underweight Emerging Markets, Canadian, and Real Estate components. It will be interesting to see if the ROBO follows up on rebalancing these components in the following quarters. The premise here is that ROBO shouldn’t care about market dynamics and variables (e.g. Greece leaving the Euro, China stocks crashing, a white hot Canadian real estate market, or when the Federal Reserve will increase interest rates). It should methodically and unemotionally reallocate.